Charlie Rangel: Obama answers not enough

Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-N.Y.) said Wednesday that he believes President Barack Obama owes the American public explanations for both the seizure of Associated Press phone records by the Department of Justice and the IRS targeting of conservative groups.

“I don’t think anyone truly believes that the president has given us a sufficient answer for America, much less the press,” Rangel said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” “I think this is just the beginning and the whole idea of comparing this with Nixon, I really think is just, it doesn’t make much sense. But the president has to come forward and share why he did not alert the press they were going to do this. He has to tell the Americans, including me: What was this national security question? You just can’t raise the flag and expect to salute it every time without any reason and the same thing applies to the IRS.”

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The White House has said Obama wasn’t involved in either the IRS decision to target conservative groups — a position backed up by an inspector general report released Tuesday — or in the DOJ’s decision to broadly subpoena phone records for 20 Associated Press phone lines in three cities.

Rangel is a member of the House Ways And Means Committee, which will hold a hearing on why the IRS gave tougher scrutiny to conservative groups’ non-profits applications on Friday morning.

“In Watergate, Senator Baker said it all, everybody uses this: ‘What did he know and when did he know it?’” Rangel said. “I am confident that the President is angry as hell about this, as he should be. The IRS is no place for partisanship, Democrat or Republican.”

But Rangel, a staunch Obama ally, said the press should give Obama time to sort out what happened.

“We have to give him an opportunity to root out any wrongdoing, whether it’s just negligence or criminal,” Rangel said. “But, for right now, to say that the president should be doubted? No. He has to come forward and give more of an answer than he has done.